Training customer service representatives, particularly those working at a call center, may involve two distinct sets of tasks: communication (e.g., conversations with customers) and psycho-motor (e.g., data entry/retrieval using information systems). In practice, customer service representatives may be expected to multitask, like communicating with a customer on a telephone call while navigating through an information system to enter and obtain information relevant to the customer's inquiry.
Different training methods may be employed to facilitate a customer service representative's learning of these two overlapping skills. For example, one training module focuses on the customer service representative obtaining both skills at the same time. As another example, another training module sequences the training so that the student learns a minimal amount of one skill (e.g., psycho-motor) before shifting to the other (e.g., communication). These training methods suffer from a number of possible drawbacks. For example, after completing either of these example training modules, the customer service representative is barely proficient at both communication and psycho-motor skills.
This type of training persists despite well-accepted education theory that people can automate responses to psycho-motor tasks, given enough practice. Automating responses to psycho-motor tasks may enable shifting of cognitive bandwidth from that psycho-motor task to another task. If training focuses first on the customer service representatives reaching high proficiency (as opposed to a minimum threshold), then the ability of customer service representatives to have higher quality conversations with customers while performing these psycho-motor tasks may improve.
A common example of this phenomenon is learning to drive a car. In the beginning, a new driver focuses all of his/her attention on the psycho-motor skills to keep the car between the white lines. The ability to carry on a typical conversation while learning how to drive is difficult at first, because most of the new driver's cognitive bandwidth is focused on the many psycho-motor tasks that make up car driving (e.g., keeping the car in its lane, maintaining a proper distance between the car and a car in front of it, checking traffic signs, maintaining speed, decelerating, accelerating, braking, turning, checking blind spots, using a turn indicator). Over time, new drivers automate psychomotor responses to driving, allowing them to reallocate cognitive bandwidth to other tasks (e.g., conversations, listening to audiobooks/music/podcasts, et cetera).